I switched it on. The red light shone and it beeped as it was supposed to. Walking down the stairs, I entered the bedroom. I approached the box, listening to the beep-beep-beep. At approximately sixteen inches away, it shorted. No. At sixteen inches, the beeps stopped and the red light quit shining. If I were to guess what had just happened, the thing on the carpet had drained the batteries.
I felt like someone strong had punched me in the chest. For a moment, I didn’t breathe. I had no idea what the cube was, but I was certain now that it was a high-tech thing with killing power. I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Get rid of it,” I whispered.
Suiting thought to action, I nerved myself to handle the box one last time. Gingerly, I lifted it and carried it topside. As the waves rolled under my boat, I went to the railing and heaved the box with the silvery cube into the ocean. It plopped nicely, sending up a spray of water, and it sank out of sight. I hoped its journey to the bottom, the building pressure, wouldn’t set it off. I hoped hitting its resting place wouldn’t jar anything bad. Just in case, it was time to leave.
I brushed the palms of my hands against my pants and ran to the control room. There was a GPS display. I turned it on and noted the exact coordinates. I memorized the numbers. Then I shut off the device and started up the diesels. With a roar of power, I sped away from the descending cube.
I’d hidden Kay’s insurance and I hoped I’d sufficiently covered myself. I should have known better.
-5-
Saturday night found me in the heart of San Francisco, in the Tenderloin District, a rough part of the city.
I needed money again for operating costs. Originally buying my motorboat, and now keeping it fueled, took money, and plenty of it. Buying the kind of clothes I needed and paying for extended excursions cost a lot. To make some, I did freelance work for Lamplight Investigations. They were a large detective agency and mainly used ex-military and ex-intelligence officers. The cases were usually for technologically sensitive firms. I concentrated on those who practiced high-tech theft. It meant I went up against a lot of Taiwanese, Chinese and Koreans, the modern ninjas with night-vision goggles and futuristic devices. Ninety-eight percent of their thefts happened the old-fashioned way, through bribery and spies in the targeted organization. In the last few years, however, the game had gotten more brazen.
Lamplight Investigations was a reputable company most of the time. Their one quirk was that they paid me out of the firm’s secret fund, never requiring paperwork from or concerning me. The fees were relatively small, which was fine. I didn’t make my living from them. Instead, I used the information I gleaned for Lamplight in order to take what I needed from the bad guys.
Because of my exposure in Geneva, I had some interesting abilities. I’d decided early on to leave regular people alone, including normal businesses. I never took from them, although it would have been easy to do. Instead, I liberated monies from the sharks of the world. Moreover, I didn’t go after the small, inoffensive sharks. I liberated the funds I needed from the hammerheads and the great whites.
I turned into a dark alley, the best the city could offer. There were winos standing around an old rusted barrel, with a good blaze going, enough so I could spy the tall flicker of flame. Old boxes, wooden slates and newspapers littered the urine-smelling urban canyon. The winos noticed me. One bent down and picked up cardboard from a torn box, adding the pieces to the fire.
I knew it was a signal to someone hidden. I saw perfectly in the murk, and noticed that the winos watched me too closely. Pretending to ignore them, I kept walking, moving deeper into the alley.
I heard the whisper of fabric as a man appeared suddenly like a new tax. He stepped out of a nook in the nearest building.
“Do not move,” a small man said with a Chinese accent. He wore a headset and aimed a gun at my midsection. Likely, he was with Chinese Intelligence, one of the biggest sharks around the Bay Area. Motioning with the gun, he said, “Hands in the air.”
While raising my hands, I glanced behind. A newspaper sheet skittered across dirty pavement. Beyond it, the fire still burned in the rusted barrel, but the winos had left.
I’d known this particular Chinese operation used one of the buildings here as a storehouse.
“Higher, raise your hands higher,” the small man said, as he continued to motion with his gun. That was a mistake. He should have kept the gun steady and aimed at me.
With my hands in the air, I stared at him. His headset was pressed against his lank hair, and the tip of his microphone had worn foam that needed replacing. I stared, but I didn’t really look at him. Instead, I concentrated, using one of my abilities to reach out to the fire in the rusted barrel.
The exposure in the particle accelerator had done something to me. For one thing, I was dense and therefore stronger after a fashion. For another, I could see better in the dark and I could manipulate light and shadows if I concentrated hard enough. Reaching out with the ability, I sucked the light emanating from the flames in the barrel and I shaded the feeble streetlight filtering into the alley. In simple terms, I made it dark.
I was ready for the phenomenon. As darkness settled, I twisted aside. He muttered in Cantonese as he squinted, looking around, and he finally stopped motioning with this gun. While lunging at him, my shoe scuffled against a glass shard, making noise. He aimed at the sound. I jerked my foot away as he fired. A spark appeared as the bullet spanged off the cement.
That was his last chance.
He brought the gun up, shouting excitedly. I swung, and my hand connected with his. The gun went flying, hit the wall, and I hit him in the face. He crumpled, mumbled something and tried to rise. He still wore the headset, and I didn’t know whether it was on or not. Part of me wanted to kick him in the face and finish it, killing him. Instead, I squatted, ripped off the headset and grabbed him by the hair. He shouted, getting excited again. I raised his head and slammed it down hard against the cement, rendering him unconscious but still leaving him very much alive.
The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds, but my head was already hurting. Sucking light at its source was hard; so was shading it. I had one more ability, and it was much easier for me. I could walk in shadows, and particularly in darkness, like a phantom. It was my compensation for being vulnerable to the sun.
Taking an electronic key from the man’s pocket, I headed for a nearby door. It was time to take my cut from this little operation and replenish my money supply.
***
Thirty years ago, they would have called this spaghetti. Now it was pasta. Some talk-show host had a monologue about it or a poem, a Bay Area fellow. He wasn’t a radio announcer, exactly. He was more of a radio shouter.
The checkered red-and-white tablecloth where I ate a late supper was clean except for the tomato-sauce dots Blake and I had made. The lights were low and the waitress was a middle-aged woman with a woolen wrap around her left forearm. She put another bottle of Corona down for Blake and glanced at my plate before she retreated.
Blake sipped his Corona and made an “aah” sound of contentment before examining me.
“Did the cube make any noise?” he asked.
I had been telling him about Kay and the cube. Blake was one of the few people outside of the Shop and the scientists on the Reservation who knew about my condition. He was one of the few people I trusted.
I loosened my belt, shifted in the chair and managed a quiet belch. “Do you mean like old-fashioned metal fillings that were supposed to make your teeth pick up radio waves?” I asked.
Blake grinned. He was a technical writer, at least when he wasn’t busy drinking. He was thin, wore glasses and had short hair. He could eat more food at a sitting than anyone I knew, and the man could drink. Where others would become sloppy drunk, Blake merely swayed a little on his stool, smirked in a knowing manner and blinked too much.
“There weren’t any sounds,” I said, as I twirled spaghetti around the tines of my fork.
“Do you know where Kay works?” he asked.
“I thought I told you: Polarity Magnetics.”
“Oh,” he said.
“You’ve heard of them?”
He nodded and sipped his beer.
“What can you tell me?”
“They have several government contracts,” Blake said. “It’s for some new battlefield weaponry. I don’t remember what right now. They’re a relatively new company,” he added.
“Did the company appear in the last four years?” I asked.
Blake closed his eyes, and nodded after a moment. Despite all the booze, the man had a phenomenal memory.
“You mentioned the Reservation,” he said. “You’ve never said exactly where it was before, although I’ve always assumed it was in Europe. What country was it in?”
“I didn’t know you had a death wish.”
He pointed the open bottle of Corona at me. “My curiosity is not self-preserving. I’ll die eventually. Until then, I must fill the void in my mind, meaning there is no knowledge I will not embrace.”
“Would you like to know the time of your death?”
He nodded emphatically. “It would be priceless information. Knowing it, I could become the world’s greatest stunt man, leaping from planes without a parachute and landing on my feet and strolling away.”
“Maybe you’d break all your bones and linger in a coma until your death.”
“You obfuscate the point, sir. Now where is this Reservation, or where was it?”
“On the south side of Hell,” I said, “in the Projects.”
Blake sipped his beer. “I grow tired of your evasions concerning the Reservation, so let’s continue discussing the cube. I definitely believe it’s part of a machine.”
Earlier we had been trying to figure out the cube’s function.
“Do you think it powers the machine?” I asked.
“No. Not if it drains energy.” Blake shrugged. “Forget all that for the moment. How are you going to retrieve it?”
“Why should I?”
“I can think of several reasons,” Blake said. “The first is the most obvious. What if the people chasing Kay strap her to a table and persuade her to talk. Then they phone you and demand an exchange: the cube for Kay.”
“I can always rent scuba gear.”
Blake shook his head. “How deep can scuba divers go? Besides, it will be dark down there, darker than even your night-seeing eyes can negotiate, I’d think. The cube could be two feet away from you and you’d swim right past it, never knowing. You as good as threw it away.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
The back of Blake’s chair creaked as he leaned against it. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”
“Yes. Information that could get you stretched on a table as people torture you.”
“Say rather: you’re withholding information that might save me from their worst efforts. Now I can’t talk so they’ll stop.”
“Just tell your torturers about me,” I said. “They’ll let you go then.”
Looking thoughtful, Blake fell silent.
Scraping the plate clean, I finished my pasta. The waitress reappeared, asked for permission and lifted my plate.
“Bring me the check,” I said.
She took it out of her apron, set it on the table and retreated into the kitchen. I put money on the plastic tray and we headed outside onto the deserted street. Well, it was almost deserted. A dingy street sweeper with dirty-red rotating brushes roared past, kicking up dust and debris. After it turned onto a different street, Blake took his leave.
I felt the wad of bills I’d taken from Chinese Intelligence. I’d rendered several other operatives unconscious inside the building. I’d been right about them. They had a printing press there, making counterfeit money. There had also been piles of heroin and stacks of legitimate money. I’d helped myself to the latter, stuffing enough bills to fill two jacket pockets.
After a long walk, I entered Scotty’s, an old-style bar. Several big black men in jeans and expensive jackets sat around a table. They were telling jokes and drinking whiskey. Billiard balls clacked in the back. There were two tables, with a group around each and bottles everywhere. Three lonely men sat along the bar, each wrapped in his private thoughts, one munching on peanuts.
I joined them after a fashion, keeping my distance as they kept theirs. With my elbows on the zinc-topped bar, I examined brown Scotch or clear vodka, alternating between them. Like gazing into a prophetic pool, I searched for answers.
“You trying to drown yourself,” the bartender asked later, a tall woman with Cleopatra eyeliner.
Smiling sadly, I paid the tab and took my leave. I’d learned some time ago. Concerning alcohol, it was better not to bring attention to myself. Everyone was an expert, and eventually he or she understood I shouldn’t be able to drink so much.
Soon, I sat in the Red Tavern. There was a karaoke machine, singing drunks and wild hoots amid the laughter.
I tried an encore performance here and steadily drank vodka. When someone sang, “We Are The Champions,” I had a glorious moment. The alcohol numbed my mind. I grinned, drank harder and tried not to think about the numbing. It failed as I became stubbornly sober. The reason was simple. Alcohol in my system dissipated too fast. Something about my greater density made it terribly difficult for me to get or remain drunk.
With a sigh, I left too much money on the bar and exited the tavern, leaving the bad singing behind.
Sunk in gloom, I wandered the streets and finally decided to give it one more try. Two hours later, I walked out the last bar as sober as I’d entered. I did some more walking and thinking, the ghost of San Francisco.
In the morning, I put on my sunglasses and searched for a church. They were hard to find here, but I slipped into the back of a small one full of Mexican people. The service was in Spanish, which was fine with me. They were nice people, wearing bright clothes. More than one man nodded to me, smiled and spoke in broken English.
I listened to the sermon, understanding not one word. But that was okay. Just being here was the thing. I wondered sometimes if God was punishing me for all my killing. That brought to mind the ex-Mossad agent telling me about the guilt that someday in old age would come back to haunt me. I’ve heard people say this Earth was Hell. Yet I’d heard a street preacher say once that people weren’t served beer, vodka or whiskey in Hell. I’d always thought that a telling point.
The collection plate came by. It’s what I had been waiting for. I put ten percent of the money I’d taken from Chinese Intelligence into the plate. If God was punishing me and possibly itching to do more, I figured this was the best way to cover my bets.
With Kay reentering my life, I had the feeling this was only the first part of what would prove to be an ugly drama.
Sometimes I hated being right.
-6-
A week passed. Then one day around ten in the morning, Blake hammered at my bedroom door on the Alamo. I’d taken him night fishing for the past several days, although we were docked now.
“Gavin!” he shouted. “Wake up. You have to see this.”
I wanted to fire a warning shot with my Browning and tell him to go away. What was he doing up so early?
“Gavin, can you hear me?”
I rolled out of bed, ran my fingers through my hair and flung open the door. “What in the—”
Blake shoved a folded newspaper in my face. It was the Los Angeles Times, dated yesterday.
“Just tell me,” I said.
He jerked the paper away, muttering, glancing around. Then he flipped on a passageway light. It made me wince and almost slam the door in his face. His fingers tightened so he crinkled the newspaper.
Blake read, “The City of Long Beach registered its twentieth fatality this year when Ms. Kay Durant was struck and killed 11:45 Thursday night while jaywalking across 1400 Center Street, a block from the Togos restaurant where she had been eating.
Dan Chester Lee, driver of the laundry truck that struck and killed the Durant woman, claimed that he did not see her until the moment of impact when she apparently darted out from between two parked cars and into the path of the vehicle. Ms. Durant, who lived alone at 600 Washington Street, was employed by Polarity Magnetics, Wayside Park, Long Beach. Police are investigating the accident and no charges have as yet been filed.”
Blake lowered the paper.
I snatched it, reading the story, remembering how Kay had run onto the street near Fisherman’s Wharf. Had she done that again in Long Beach?
“Polarity Magnetics,” Blake said pointedly.
I grunted, rereading the story, wondering what had really happened.
“Did she run out on the street?” he asked. “Or did someone push her?
I shoved the paper against Blake’s chest so he bumped against a bulkhead. I squeezed past him, hurried up the stairs and into the lounge. There, I poured myself a drink. I let the cubes clink in my glass as I swirled and swirled.
Kay was dead. I couldn’t believe it. She had been good for Dave. He used to love stroking her legs. She’d survived the terrible accident in Geneva, survived working for the Shop and now some useless laundry truck had run her over. I shook my head. It hadn’t been a useless laundry truck. I doubted it had been an accident at all. Her insurance hadn’t worked: the cube supposedly in my possession. People had hunted her down and killed her. Had she died because those people knew I’d dumped the cube into the ocean? No. That didn’t make sense. Besides, it didn’t matter now. Kay was dead. She was gone.
I drank the vodka and poured myself more. Kay was dead, and Kay had carried a box here, bringing me a cube to watch. What had been so important about the big cube? I’d never know, and I didn’t care about it. Kay was dead. That’s all that mattered.
I drank more vodka.
Blake entered silently and sat down, with the Times rolled up in his skinny hands.
I touched my lips to the glass for the third time. With a thump, I set it on the drink cabinet.
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